Sidling against the wall, or as well as a four-legged body can sidle, Mott creeps toward the sound with Lenny close behind. The moans grow louder the deeper they traverse into the library, echoing through the dusty corridors and raking down his spine. Chills course through him.
Shuddering, he tries to stifle his rapid breathing—to no avail. His heart is pounding too hard and his blood is rushing too fast to control. He feels like he's far too loud, so loud it's a wonder he hasn't been discovered yet. Even the creaking floorboards beneath him seem to scream throughout the room.
Lenny is too light to make much noise. But he nearly trips several times due to his skittish shuffling, and Mott has had to catch him more than once to keep him from falling and making a racket. Evidently, he's just as nervous as Mott. Which means, when they get to the room where the noise seems to be coming from, they both pause at the door.
Mott looks expectantly at Lenny. Hastily, Lenny shakes his head and points viciously at him. Mott gawks and shakes his head even harder. Lenny narrows his eyes.
Wordlessly, they bicker. It's a childish argument that mostly amounts to 'you go first', 'no you', and so on. Eventually, they reach a silent truce and decide to enter at the same time. But just as they're psyching themselves up to do it, the door opens.
All at once, three voices scream.
Mott jumps back, his hackles raised, and throws a punch at the air. Beside him, Lenny bodily clings to his neck, attached like glue. In the doorway, a cinccino clutches her scarf-like fur and looks ready to faint.
Mott and Lenny fall into a pile in the hallway, limbs splayed every which way. The cinccino falls on her butt and scrambles back, pointing a terror-stricken finger at them.
"R-r-robbers!" She shrieks, dragging herself away from them. "Someone, help!"
"We're not robbers!" Mott cries in an equally panicked shriek. "Who the hell are you?!"
"I'm the curator of this museum; I should be the one asking who you are!"
"We just wanted some information!"
"So you broke in?!"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time!"
Lenny shouts, "Why are we still screaming?!"
The curator seems to take his question to heart, quickly snapping her mouth shut. Mott, likewise, shuts himself up. For a while, the only sound is everyone's heavy, terrified breathing. Minutes later, after everyone has come down from their own heart attacks, the curator fixes them with a distrustful, wary gaze.
Then, she bolts.
"Hey!" Mott yells, racing after her even though he doesn't know why. "Where are you going?!"
"I'm calling the authorities!"
Lenny dashes alongside Mott, quickly overtaking him. "Please don't, Miss!"
In a mocking voice, she echoes, "Oh, please don't, Miss—screw you! You broke into my museum!"
She darts through shelves of books with impeccable navigation. Not knowing the terrain as well, Mott and Lenny find themselves screeching to a halt every few seconds to avoid barrelling into a bookcase. Sometimes, they have to completely turn around and backtrack. All the while, she gets farther and farther away, bounding over desks and shelves with swift fluidity.
Mott really didn't want to have to attack her, but he also really doesn't want the authorities to get involved. Muttering an apology under his breath, he shoots a stream of water at her the next time she leaps into the air. It strikes her dead on, knocking her into a wall. She hits the wallpaper with a wet splat and then flops to the ground.
Mott turns sharply to intercept her. "By the allegory genre section, Lenny!"
"The what now?"
"Allegory; it's a literary genre of metaphorical works, and—forget it, just follow me!"
Speeding through a dizzying set of twists and turns, Mott guides them through an endless cavern of bookcases just in time to arrive in the corner where the curator slowly picks herself up. Reaching out a hand, Mott moves to help her up.
Not quick enough. She whips her sopping wet head up and opens her mouth to unleash an unholy screech.
Mott is blown back by the burst of soundwaves. They're so jarring and loud that Mott is sure his ears are bleeding and his brain is rattling. He staggers back into Lenny, crashing against a bookcase and knocking it over with a loud smashing noise. The fallen shelf catches his ankle and trips him, and he and Lenny both go tumbling down.
Paper flies into the air from the impact, fluttering down and covering his eyes. He swats the loose leaf paper away, clearing up his vision just in time to see the curator pull herself back up and hurry away.
"For the love of—we're not gonna hurt you!" He nearly groans, clambering up to give chase. "Let's just talk!"
Tracking her isn't too hard, not when she leaves behind massive puddles of water and strands of wet fur. Following her trail leads him back into the museum, where there's significantly less twists and turns. Out on the open floor, there's a direct path between her and Mott, which is great. There's also a direct path between her and the door, which is much less great.
Fortunately, her soaking wet fur seems to slow her down a bit. Mott is still not fast enough to catch up to her, even in her impeded state. Luckily for him, his teammate can catch up to her even without the handicap.
In swift, long strides, Lenny sprints toward her and closes the distance between them with frightening speed. She dares one look over her shoulder, her eyes widening in horror at their proximity. In an effort to gain some space, she whirls around and blasts them with another wave of violent noise.
Lenny is struck. His body is shot off the ground, soaring through the air and crashing into a statue. The attack hits Mott, too, but he's braced for it this time. When it collides with him, he doesn't go flying back. He doesn't even stop. He charges straight through the staggering force, plowing into the cinccino and bowling her over.
He winces when she hits the floor. So much for not hurting her.
Behind him, Lenny pushes himself to his feet and jogs over. There's a few marks and bruises on his body, but nothing serious. Panting heavily, he looks down at the curator worriedly and asks, "...Is she dead?"
Immediately, she spins around. "No, I'm not dead! But I bet you two wish I were, huh? Go to Hell!"
"Listen, lady, we just wanted to get some information on Zekrom," he snaps, aggravated. She stills. "We weren't gonna attack or anything."
She regards them suspiciously. "Zekrom?"
"Yes, ma'am," Lenny confirms with a nod. "We wanna stop it from ruining the whole region."
Her body still holds a taut hesitance, but her eyes flicker with the slightest hint of interest.
"So," she says, sizing them both up. "You broke in for information on Zekrom. Did you find what you were looking for?"
"Somewhat," Mott answers, meeting her gaze, "but we'd like to know more."
She takes his hint for what it is, sighing. "Why don't we talk in my office?"
He nods.
The walk back is quiet and awkward. The curator glares over her shoulder at them every few moments, still sopping wet. With her fur so matted down, she looks like an angry mop. Nevertheless, Lenny tries to start a conversation with her by asking more about her work at the museum. She doesn't deign him with any meaningful responses, keeping her answers short and curt. She seems more irritated by them than anything, almost like she's counting down the seconds until she can get rid of them.
That's fair.
The curator picks up some fallen books on the way back, glaring at them pointedly each time she does. She maintains the harsh stare as she reshelves each book, refusing to break eye contact. Lenny shuffles uncomfortably and Mott rolls his eyes each time. One of the books has a water stain on it, courtesy of yours truly, and Mott gets an extra long scowl for that. But other than that, the walk is rather uneventful.
They pass through the Zekrom tunnel again on their way to her office. Lenny looks at the pictures with somber eyes as they pass by. Nudging him, Mott tilts his head to wordlessly ask what's wrong.
Lenny nudges him back with a shoulder as if to say, 'don't worry about it.' Mott frowns, worrying more.
They're in her office before he can press the matter, though, so he lets it go. Mott's surprised to see the space is warm and well-cleaned, only slightly dim due to the darkness of the outside. The office already has the sconces lit, as well as a heavy looking candlestick on the desk. The room is completely free of dust and cobwebs, almost making Mott forget that it's connected to an unkempt building. There's even a cot tucked into the far corner that looks like it's been getting some use.
This is the same room they heard the spooky wailing noises coming from, Mott realizes. Pulling an annoyed expression, Mott demands, "Why were you making so many creepy noises in here?"
She throws him a deadpan glare. "You mean crying?"
"That's what you were doing?"
She scowls. "Yes, before I was so rudely interrupted."
"Why were you crying?" Lenny wonders, sympathy in his tone.
"Why should I answer any of your questions?" She sniffs, jutting her nose in the air. With a pointed look from Mott, she seems to remember that she brought them here in order to do that very thing. She sighs. "Look. I was upset that I had to close down the museum, so I was crying. Happy?"
That gets Mott rolling on his interrogation. "And why exactly was the museum closed?"
She looks away. "Funding issues."
"Really? You, the museum with the largest collection of Zekrom literature, just so happened to have funding issues around the same time that Zekrom's attacks began? Forgive me if I'm not convinced," he retorts with a twisting frown. "It sounds pretty suspicious."
"Ugh, fine!" She cries, throwing her hands in the air. "Look, I wasn't entirely lying: the museum really does rely on a lot of rich patrons to maintain funding. Around the time of Zekrom's first attacks, a lot of researchers started coming here to try and find a way to stop it. But as soon as they seemed to be getting close to a breakthrough, an anonymous patron pulled all their funds! It was more than eighty percent of my funding! I tried to raise money to make up for it, but nothing worked. I was forced to shut down and I've been living here and trying to research Zekrom on my own ever since, without much luck."
Mott puts a hand to his chin in thought. Why would a patron suddenly pull all their funding? Even more worrying, why pull it when the museum was making progress toward defeating Zekrom? The correlation there makes it seem like the funds were pulled because of the progress.
...Were they?
Why?
"Did they give an explanation for pulling their funds?" Mott asks. "Had this anonymous patron sent in complaints prior?"
"No! None of my patrons had been complaining about anything; the pull was totally out of the blue," she laments, slumping into her office chair. "Even worse, after I lost all that funding and had to close, the rest of my patrons jumped ship because they didn't want to contribute to a 'dying museum' or something. Well, screw them! Who needs them, anyway?"
With no other explanation to go off of, Mott is forced to consider the grim possibility that the anonymous patron pulled their funds due to the progress the researchers were making on Zekrom. For whatever reason, that patron doesn't want Zekrom stopped. Could it be because they are the one behind this whole disaster?
"We read a source that says Zekrom can be summoned from a stone and controlled with it," Mott continues. "Is it true?"
"That's what most scholars agree on, yes," she replies, running a hand down her weary face.
Lenny surprises him by taking the lead of the questioning. "Is it ever able to act on its own?"
"Is it… I'm sorry?"
"Does it have consciousness? Or does it just respond to people's desires?" He presses. "Does it have feelings about what it's being made to do? Does it get any kind of a say in what it does, or is it helpless to be controlled?"
The curator fixes him with a peculiar look. "How is any of that going to help you beat it?"
Lenny taps his hands together. "Um… I guess it wouldn't be much of a help. I was just curious."
Mott regards him for a moment. Is that why Lenny was looking at those paintings of Zekrom so sadly? Does he feel bad for the thing?
When Mott takes a moment to think about it, having an entire existence tied into others' desires without any autonomy of your own sounds miserable. He kinda understands Lenny's sympathy, now.
Still, the questions must go on. "Does anyone know where the stone was all this time?"
"Not a clue. Obviously somebody found it, but that somebody wasn't me."
"What does the stone look like?"
She sighs. "I wouldn't know. It's outside my field of study. But… I do have a colleague who…"
Suddenly, she jumps to her feet, throwing open a desk drawer so forcefully that the candlestick on her desk teeters dangerously close to falling off. Lenny swiftly reaches out to steady it before it catches the carpet ablaze. Snatching a piece of paper out of the desk, she furiously scribbles something down.
"Professor Hallowood. She'll be able to help you," she states, handing Mott the scrap of paper. He scans over it, reading the name and address before focusing his attention back on the curator. "She's an expert in legendary archeology. If anyone would know what an ancient dragon stone would look like, it would be her."
Professor Hallowood, Stawford Town, Bridge St.
Stawford Town is an inland town about a week's walk from here. Mott's never been, but from what he's heard the town focuses heavily on intellectual pursuits. Even if this professor has no clue what the stone looks like, there's a chance they'll be able to find someone there who does. This is a solid lead.
"That's about as much as I can give you on the subject," she states, tapping her fingers against her desk thoughtfully. "The only useful information I can give you at this point is how to seal Zekrom back in the stone."
Mott's eyes nearly bug out of his head. "You know how to seal it?!"
She snorts. "Of course I do, I'm not that useless as a scholar. So, first of all, you'll obviously need to find the stone."
Excitedly, Lenny bounces on his feet and urges, "Then?"
"Relax, I'm getting there," she scoffs, rolling her eyes. "Then, you'll have to take the stone in your hands and—"
A golden glint flashes past his eyes, too fast to see, too fast to stop. But then there's a sharp thud, dull cracking sound, and blood spurting into the air.
The curator, eyes wide, stumbles back. The fur on top of her head is a deep, ugly red. Weakly, she raises a hand up to the wound. Her fingers press into her skull as if it's soft.
She collapses, and the candlestick from her desk clatters to the ground with her, the light snuffed out.
"Mott, the rafters!" Lenny cries, pointing to the ceiling.
The ceiling is too high up for the light to properly illuminate it, so even when Mott squints he can barely see the figure retreating into the shadows.
"Hey!" Mott shouts, charging up a blast of water. He shoots it into the rafters, but the shadow nimbly dodges. "Get back here!"
Before he can strike again, the intruder opens the skylight window and slips out onto the roof, escaping into the cover of the darkness. There's no way Mott can climb up to chase them through that window, much less actually fit through it. Lenny might be able to, but…
"Ma'am? Ma'am, can you hear me?" Lenny calls, shaking her worriedly. She's still as stone and unresponsive. Her head is misshapen after the bludgeoning; blood pools under her and stains her fur. Lenny shakes her harder. "Mott—Mott, she's not responding!"
Mott hurries over and takes her wrist in his hand. He waits, anxiously, for the tell-tale signs of life.
Nothing.
He drops her wrist. "It's too late. She's gone."
Lenny covers his mouth, horrified and grief-stricken. Mott puts a hand on his back, looking up at the window.
It's too late for the curator. But it isn't too late for justice.
"Lenny, let's go catch that bastard!"
